Motorola, Enable The Xoom's microSD Card Slot Already

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This is just crazy. The Xoom, which was supposed to be Google’s pet Honeycomb tablet, came out three months ago and the microSD card slot still doesn’t work. Oh, it’s not a Android or Honeycomb thing. The slot works fine in every other Honeycomb tablet. It’s a Motorola thing and it’s ridiculous.

Updates have came and gone and none of them including the brand new Android 3.1 update allows the Xoom to use expandable memory. The microSD card slot works the Asus Transformer. It works on the Acer Iconia Tab and the Samsung GalTab 10.1. But not the Xoom.

Some would say that the lack of a working flash memory slot is what doomed the Xoom. That’s not true. It likely prevented a few sales, but there are many other reasons why the Xoom didn’t live up to the hype. I can’t even come up with a good use case for the slot, but it’s on the tablet so why not enable it already.

People like the idea of expandable memory. It’s one the iPad’s biggest missing features. The idea is that you could easily access and move content between devices. Instead, the Xoom forces owners to use the built-in 32GB memory. That’s fine for loading movies to watch on the train, but not so much for sharing documents, pictures or movies between devices away from a computer.

Honeycomb 3.1 added Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) support, which gives Honeycomb tablets access to a camera’s expandable memory through a special cable. (Verizon sells it for $20) Selling that high margin cable is the only reason I can think of that Motorola has yet to enable slot. Maybe they’re trying to go the Apple route and make money on the backend through accessories. But at least the iPad doesn’t have a non-working microSD card slot that’s just sitting there, mocking the few Xoom owners out there.

Motorola, please, this me being serious. Enable that slot. You don’t have many Xoom fans out there so not make them happy?